Grief Assuaged by Nature

 

In August, my dad died.  I spent a few hours processing the news, but all I felt was an emotional maelstrom and a physical need to go outside and DO something.

So I harvested saskatoon berries. 

Berry picking has always been a calming and meditative activity for me.  It engenders feelings of gratitude at the reliable plenty of a summer’s harvest.  

 Today though, my mind was whirling with images of my dad and my siblings as I plucked the fruit.  In the process, the berries soothed my knot of grief.

I remembered when I planted these six, spindly little seedlings a decade ago. Every year, I worried when the springy boughs bowed below the snow, wondering how they would fare the following spring.  Some branches broke.  Of those, I taped and splinted a few.  Some benefited.  Others didn’t.  I pruned low branches girdled beneath our deep snow by hungry voles.  I mulched in the fall and fertilized in the spring.

Of the six trees, two are tall and prolific producers.  Three are middling, and one is the runt of the group.  

Since each tree has grown differently, I have lots of “woulda, coulda, shoulda thoughts” about my interventions. What if I had planted them elsewhere and farther apart?  Some trees hog the sun, grow taller and stronger and their boughs whip the narrower branches of an adjacent tree, which becomes stunted.  What if I had pruned them better, earlier?  Now such intervention on some major limbs might kill the tree.  What if I had watered them deeper?  What if?

All of us who are children, as well as parents, co-parents, step-parents, and siblings contemplate such what ifs.  It is hard to step out of a family or community and view it from outside.

As I gathered the berries, I reached for those of the darkest blue hue, heavy and round with juice.  Since the berries do not all ripen at the same time, I leave those that are purple or red that need additional time to mature more slowly in the sun. 

Some berries grow in ideal locations – plenty of sun, protected from the wind, with room to grow, well separated from others. 

Some are physically deformed by birds that pecked part of them.  A few look fine, but skinny larvae burrowed inside and rot the interior.  In thick clusters, a single berry in the middle is always desiccated and surrounded by a gray fluff of mold, which taints the berries surrounding it. It did not have room to grow so it died and infected those surrounding it.

Each tree, each berry, each season, teaches me a different lesson.      

That day, different from a decade of other harvesting days, my mind viewed this line of trees as a community, each tree as a family, and the berries as individual members of that family tree.

My dad has died.  The saskatoons consoled me because I observed among those trees and branches, life experiences that illuminate my own.  

 I can’t hug my dad.  But I can stroke these branches and think about his children and grandchildren and great grandchildren who will grow toward the sun, strong and resilient.  He was a strong tree with, like all of us, some weak branches.  He has many progeny, who will blow and bend with the winds of the future.

We have a bench along the lake shore with three stone cairns as memorials.  When I retrieve his ashes, we will build a fourth. 

       

Dog Days of Summer (where does that evocative phrase come from?)

 

The most urban of urbanites, who would not be caught dead beyond the highways and high rises of their favorite cities, may well evade many aspects of the natural world.  But one powerful aspect of Mother Nature, weather, imposes its will in even the most human of man made environments. 

Bee hive check for population and production

 

For many readers,, weather determines the clothes we wear, the design of our homes (we hope) and the utility bills we pay.  But for all history and even today, weather determines feast or famine, and death by freezing cold or excessive heat and all sorts of  disasters, like hurricanes, flooding, and tornadoes.

So it is not surprise that most religions have deities not only of weather, but of particular aspects of it, like storms, sun, rain.  Nor is it surprising that the constellations, which we see at particular times of year, are associated with the weather of that season.

I love researching the etymology of evocative phrases.  “The dog days of summer” intrigued me to find the best description to share with readers.

Below is a well written article from www.dictionary.com that explains this term that dates back to the ancient  Greeks.  Can you guess why?  Read below.

July 15, 2015 article, no author identified

Origin of Dog Days

It’s hot again, up in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s that time of year when the sun shines its most unforgiving beams, baking the ground and, indeed, us. It’s the portion of summer known as the hottest time of the year. Or, more delightfully, the dog days.

 

Contrary to common conjecture, the dog days do not take their peculiar name from weather that “isn’t fit for a dog,” or heat that is so extreme it drives dogs mad. These folk etymologies shrink in comparison with the actual background of the phrase, a story of astronomical proportions.

 

The dog days, in the most technical sense, refer to the one- to two-month interval in which a particularly bright star rises and sets with the sun, shining during the daylight hours and staying hidden at night. This star is known by three names: Sirius, the Dog Star, and Alpha Canis Majoris. Apart from being the most prominent star in the constellation Canis Major (Latin for “Greater Dog”), this heavenly body is responsible for the origin of the expression dog days, a phrase that has endured through millennia.

 

One of our hives swarming in mid-July

Classicists and astronomers will know the Dog Star as Sirius. The earliest record of this name comes from the Greek poet Hesiod, in Work and Days, written in seventh century BC. Meaning “searing” or “scorching,” Sirius encapsulates the Dog Star’s unusual brightness. Additionally, in Greek mythology Sirius is the name of the dog of Orion (a mythical hunter who has a constellation of his own adjacent to Canis Major), which further reinforces the Dog Star’s historical associations with canines. This tradition continues in the Harry Potter series; Sirius Black’s Animagus form is a large black dog.

 

The Dog Star’s connection to dogs was not only maintained by constellations and mythology, it was boosted by the fact that dogs seemed to take the brunt of the dog days. They suffered from the heat more intensely than humans seemed to, and were at greater risk of madness.

 

The English phrase dog days, which entered the language in the 1500s, is a direct translation from the Latin term caniculares dies, which refers to this specific seasonal phenomenon and is modeled after the same term in Hellenistic Greek. It is also from Latin that we got the word canicular, which refers to the Dog Star, as well the precursor to the expression dog days: canicular days.

 

The Dog Star, being the second brightest star that can be seen with the naked eye, did not escape the attention of ancient astronomers. Nor did its annual disappearance from the night sky and the corresponding influx of heat. Initially, ancient Greeks blamed the Dog Star for the sweltering weather, assuming that its brightness paired with the sun manifested in the hottest days of the year. This belief was debunked in the first-century BC by Greek astronomer Geminus, but the significance of the Dog Star remained untempered.

 

About 100 potatoes, various varietals

In ancient times, the dog days would have roughly corresponded to the summer solstice. Due to precession, however, the days have fallen later and later in the year. The exact dates of the dog days depend on your latitude, but by today’s estimation they begin on July 3 and come to a close on August 11.

 

Humans have been griping about the weather as far back as written history reaches, and the dog days were an important time for all. The Ancient Greeks and Romans, in particular, had grim feelings for Sirius, associating it with an outbreak of insufferable heat and fever. Civilization has long credited the objects in the sky with influence over the earth and its inhabitants; if it’s not the Dog Star cursing you with sultry summer heat and madness it’s the moon driving you to lunacy. It seems you can’t win when it comes to the celestial bodies. (end of article)

 

The heat conveyed by the word choice, Sirius, and the phrase, dog days of summer, may sound cute to someone who can retreat to a shady interior cooled by air conditioning.  But for thousands of years, including today, a scorching end of the growing season means that food crops bolt and die before the optimal size and condition for harvesting.  Fruits shrivel and drop from the trees.  Shallow rooted plants, even perennials, can die. Honey bees will swarm because the hive gets too crowded and hot and they need "to thin the herd." Normal irrigation is inadequate and additional water may be unavailable when rivers run low and warm, which can kill fish, as well.  

People dependent on the food they grow fear weather outside a fairly narrow range for optimal growth.  Too much heat, too much rain, too late or early a frost all result in a winter of food rationing and hopes for an early spring.  This is why so many first people were nomadic and did NOT settle down to year round agriculture.  It was unpredictable.  It seemed more prudent to travel to places with robust seasons of hunting, trapping, and fishing, with the bonus of gathering and preserving plant materials in each of those locations.   Still, in many far North American tribal languages, the period around the month of March was called “the month of hunger.”

Brassicas, potatoes, beans

The beauties of nature and its beneficent creations are awe inspiring.  But so, too, are is its mercurial powers of destruction.   Even people who live in cities experience the devastation of tornadoes, hurricanes, and “snowmaggedons.”  But it is people who grow some of their own food who understand why an evocative phrase like “the dog days of summer” could strike visceral fear in those who experienced that weather.     

How to Make Berry Wine (from fresh, frozen, or canned fruit)

For a dozen or so years, I have made palatable wine (usually pinot noir and pinot grigio) from commercial kits that vary in price from $69 - $200 per 6 gallons.  To some, I added fresh berries that we grow at home. 

I have also made 4 batches of mead with the honey that our honeybees produced.  One batch of raspberry mead was glorious, but three others failed to ferment, so I ended up with three gallons of raspberry/honey syrup – more than anyone needs.

Last month, inspired by a friend who makes about 10 types of wine from apricot and wild plum trees, dandelion flowers, and fireweed flowers, among other ingredients, I decided to start with raspberries and red currants that I gathered and canned last summer.  Next up will be high bush cranberry wine.

A mere month after starting the fermentation, I was delighted by the early flavor of the currant wine.  In fact, I vastly preferred it to the raspberry wine!  Who would have thought that!  The former already has a vibrant flavor and silky mouth feel.  It tastes so rich that I add a dollop or two to flavor occasional glasses of the commercial pinot grigio or pinot noir that I made at the same time.    

By contrast, the raspberry wine is currently disappointing, but of course I expect wines to take several months to age.  At the moment, it tastes and smells thin, with a watery aftertaste.  I also made a second gallon with the “seconds,” which I found as an extra on one recipe.  This uses the pulpy seeds left over in the cheesecloth bag after the first batch has soaked for a week or ten days.  I think this may be the berry equivalent of grappa.  This batch had a slightly leathery taste, which my mentor thinks is due to the tannins in the seeds.  Since I am not a fan of woody wines, I don’t care for this flavor in the raspberry wine, either, but another palate may like it.  Over the next six months, I will check the wine to ensure that it does not mold or go bad, but otherwise, let it age in a dark spot behind the couch.

I have concluded that my dramatically contrasting reactions to the currant and raspberry wines may result from the fact that I seeded the former in a food mill before canning, but not the latter.  Like the currants, I always seed the cranberries that I juice, so I look forward to making some of that.  In future batches, I will seed raspberries, too, for wine.  

Recipe

You can find many recipes on line for the fruit of your choice.  One of the most famous people in this industry, with dozens of fruit wine recipes, is Jack Keller, who died in 2020.  You can find his recipes on many websites, such as www.homebrewtalk.com and www.winemakermag.com. I would heartily encourage any fruit wine maker to start with his recipes and then adjust for taste after a first or second batch.

  Jack Keller’s raspberry wine recipe:

 

    3 pounds of red raspberries

    1 pound 11 ounces of granulated sugar

    Water to 1 gallon

    4 teaspoons of pectic enzyme⁹0

    1 teaspoon of yeast nutrient

    Half a teaspoon of yeast energizer

    1 gram of Fermaid K  (I did not use this)

    Lalvin’s RC 212, a red wine yeast  (I used Lanvin 47)

Heat one gallon of potable water to temperature that will allow the sugar to dissolve into a thin solution.  Stir.

If you add berry juice, just pour it in.  If you add fruit with seeds or some other chunky fruit, like cherries, put it in a cheesecloth bag first, for easy removal. (You can use fresh, frozen or canned fruit).

Let the pot cool down to about 105 degrees F.   Stir again.  If you plan to let the wine ferment in that same pot (which I do), move it to a place where it can remain undisturbed, preferably in a temperature range of 65 – 75 degrees.  Sprinkle the yeast energizer and nutrient across the top of the liquid, and then the wine yeast.  Do not stir. Loosely lid it, and add an airlock or alternative (see below, under equipment).

If you plan to ferment the liquid in a different pot, crock, or bucket, pour the liquid in, set in in a place where it can remain, undisturbed for several weeks, let the liquid settle, and then sprinkle the yeast energizer and nutrient and wine yeast over the top. If the location’s temperature is below 65, the yeast will take longer to multiply, delaying and sometimes stalling fermentation.  A stalled ferment can be fixed, but if not, you have juice or low alcohol wine. 

On the second and subsequent days, stir it vigorously with a very long spoon for a few minutes, sometimes  twice a day.  Be sure to push the cheesecloth bag down below the surface so the fruit will not mold.  (If you do not contain the fruit in a cheesecloth bag, it will float on top, creating a crust that (a) can mold and (b) segregates the yeast from the air that it needs to survive.)  I find it fascinating to see, when the yeast population grows,  the colony actively swimming in the liquid.  I would use the word, swarming, except for the negative insect imagery.  If the yeast growth has slowed to the point where I see no movement during the first week, I sprinkle a teaspoon of yeast nutrient or yeast energizer on the surface.  This will feed and energize the yeast, so they can consume more of the fruit sugar and turn it into alcohol. 

About Day 7, use your wine thief (a turkey baster) to squeeze enough liquid into the hydrometer for the thermometer to float. Read the measurement.  If it is near 1.03, this means that your juice is partially fermented.  Squeeze as much liquid as you can from your cheesecloth bag into the liquid and then remove it.  About every other day after this, measure again until the hydrometer reads 1.00 or 0.99. Numbers above this mean that much sugar remains unconverted by the yeast into alcohol.  The sweeter the taste at this point, the lower the alcohol.  If you choose not to use a hydrometer, you can simply taste a few spoonfuls of wine every other day after Day 7 until you like flavor.  (You can also use the hydrometer to calculate the percentage of alcohol, too, through a formula that you can find on-line).  My wines (from kits or from my harvested fruit) generally ferment by Day 10 - 12. 

When the wine reaches a palatable profile for you, siphon the liquid into a glass growler, leaving behind the yeasty gunk that coats the bottom of the prior container.  Install the air lock, so that any remaining CO2 can escape.  You don’t want to cap the wine too soon or residual C02 could cause the growler to explode. If there is a lot of yeast and residue at the bottom of the growler, (a reason to use a glass container), I siphon it again into a clean container.  This results in a clearer wine. 

I don’t bother to bottle and cork the wine.  I simply store it in the growlers and drink it within the year.    

Equipment

To try a few small batches without much financial outlay, you can start with the following equipment.  Note alternatives for a first batch or two to further reduce your initial expenditure.  Like many types of hobby equipment, you can probably find much of this used.

*A cooking pot bigger than one gallon to heat the liquid. 

*The same or a second pot or crock or jug with a lid that fits loosely and preferably has a hole in which to put an air lock.  For one gallon batches, I use a pressure cooker (not a pressure canner) in which I removed the plastic plug, leaving a hole in which I plunge an air lock.

*An air lock or two.  This is a small, inexpensive multi-part plastic gizmo that allows CO2 out but does not let oxygen into the liquid.  A second choice is to lay cheese cloth, a thin T shirt or even a paper napkin over the hole.  This will keep out bugs, ash, and dust, but will let oxygen in, which can influence the taste over time.  But this will work. 

*A rubber stopper or two with a hole in the bottom, that holds the plastic air lock in place.  Buy the size stopper that fits your growler or carboy (a 5-6 gallon heavy glass jug).  The former is smaller than the latter.

*A cheesecloth bag or two (big enough to hold a heavy gallon of sodden berries and juice).  (These inexpensive bags are useful for jams, jellies, cheese, teas, pickling, etc.  Buy a dozen.

*A plastic siphon (to move the wine from its initial fermenting stage container to its second, aging container).  Yes, you can simply pour it, but a siphon enables you to leave behind the yeast in the first container, so that your final product will not taste yeasty.

*A hydrometer (this looks like a 10 inch thermometer that fits in a tall, thin glass or plastic container and measures alcohol level of the liquid you pour into the container).  Alternatively, taste your wine every other day after Day 7 or 10.  A sweet flavor and a higher hydrometer reading means that the fermentation is not finished and therefore, the alcohol level is low.  A reading below 1 (0.99) means that fermentation is complete. (In my experience, unfermented fruit/sugar/water solution starts around 1.08.)

*A wine thief, which is simply a turkey baster to collect wine to squeeze into the hydrometer

*Wine yeast.  The most versatile and reliable that I have used are Lanvin 47 and Lanvin 1118, however, wine connoisseurs suggest particular yeast strains for different fruits and flavor profiles.  You can buy wine yeast on-line or at beer supply stores, along with the optional items below.  One packet is enough for a batch of 1 – 6 gallons of wine.  These will age out at some point depending on storage temperature and humidity, so do not expect to stockpile several years worth. 

Optional but useful purchases:

Yeast nutrient and yeast energizer.  These are powders that gig the yeast to consume the sugars if they have slowed down. Here in our wood heated cabin in Alaska, I need these aids and/or I move the fermenters (the first container to which you have added the yeast) closer to the wood stove.  

Citric Acid:  If your wine is too sweet for your liking, due to the fruit, you can add citric acid to balance the flavor.  If it is overly sweet because the fermentation stalled, that means that the yeast has not consumed the sugar and converted it to alcohol, so the wine will be low alcohol.  The citric acid will balance the flavor but do nothing about the alcohol level. For some wine makers, this could be an intentional choice, such as 4 or 5% alcohol wine.

Pectic enzyme:  Pectic enzyme helps draw out the liquid of fruit, requiring less mashing work from you.  This is not as necessary for juicy fruit like berries, but useful for fruit with more texture, like apricots, cherries, and plums.

Sugar or honey:  If your resulting wine is too dry for your palate, you can “back sweeten” it.  Heat the honey or sugar so that it dissolves.  Pick a test amount of wine, like a quart, and measure how much sweetener you add to your liking.  Then extrapolate to the whole batch.  Obviously if you pour the sweetener in cold, it will just sink to the bottom and you are likely to add too much. 

Clarifiers and stabilizers:  The commercial kits come with packets that clarify and stabilize the wine.  I have not used any in my initial batches of dark berry wine, but would do so if I made a light colored wine, from grapes, pineapple, or apricots, and if I intended to store the wine for longer than I currently anticipate. 

Conclusion:  There are many advantages to this hobby.  

1)  Whether you choose to make wine from a commercial kit or from store bought fruit, the cost per bottle of wine will be MUCH lower than purchasing wine.  Basically, 5 bottles = 1 gallon.  A commercial kit of concentrated wine grape juice usually makes 6 gallons = 30 bottles.  The price for kits range from $65 to $200 depending on the provenance of the grapes.  If you pay $10 - 30/bottle, that = $300 - $900 for the same volume of wine. If you grow or forage the fruit, the cost for making the wine is simply the one time purchase of equipment, ongoing yeast packets and some optional items, like yeast energizer.  If you wish to make wine from store bought fruit or juice concentrate in the freezer section, you can price that out.   

2) The expense for equipment is for hardy elements that can be used over and over for many years.  We have had to replace plastic and delicate pieces occasionally, like a broken hydrometer, but otherwise, the purchases are “one and done”… for many years.   

3) Much of the equipment, like containers, cheese cloth, and airlocks, and the baster (evocatively called a wine thief) are multi-functional for other kitchen processes. 

4) For the gardener or forager, it is a  joy to harvest fresh fruit and turn it into something delectable.  I routinely harvest 6 gallons each of raspberries, currants, and cranberries per year for a variety of gustatory pleasures.  For wine, next year, I will harvest even more. 

5) The preparatory time commitment is low.  

The negatives:

1) You need to have space to store the equipment and the aging wine.  My son did so in a dormitory closet. 

2) While store bought wine is consistent in quality along a particular brand, your fruit wine quality may vary, depending on the quality of the fruit and your temperatures, just like any other agricultural product you grow at home. 

I recommend this endeavor for anyone who wants to save money and make use of fruit that you can buy, grow, or forage.

Bountiful Berry Harvest in Alaska + Recipe for BBQ sauce with berries

Sadly, 2023 was “the summer that wasn’t.” The Land of the Midnight Sun was, instead, the Land of the Midnight Rain and Mid-day Rain.  One friend quipped that his location only had three rains - but one lasted 28 days!  In fact, local weather reporters said that this has been the coolest summer since 2008.  The temperature was not as much of a problem as all the rainy and overcast days. For us, I think the longest stretch of consecutive, sunny days was 4, and those were few and far between.  

 For someone who tries to raise a lot of our own food, this was a sad state of affairs. My vegetable gardens were pretty much useless.  Seeds, seedlings, and bulbs rotted in the ground, and those that grew were leggy and thin.  Cauliflower and broccoli never set heads.  Sunflowers never flowered.  Even the plants protected from rain in the greenhouse, were underwhelming. 

Fortunately, though, 6 different herbs did well on a covered porch, so I dried or infused them in cooking oils and we harvested GALLONS of berries which love this ecosystem in sun or rain.  Yea!

Our manual food mill

Our boreal forest has acidic soil, from the spruce trees.  So berry bushes are common under story plants.  Wild raspberry bushes grow in such dense stands that I have to cut them back with a weed whacking blade to create a path or to encourage anything else to grow in that area.  I love wild high bush cranberries, though, and nurture hundreds of those plants, pruning dead branches and suckers, culling weak ones to give healthy ones room to grow.  Some of the plants now tower above the “normal” height as slim trees.  Little blueberry bushes hug the lake shore.  We kayak to gather a handful at a time.  Even our dog likes to eat those berries right off the bushes.    

In addition to enjoying the wild berries, I have planted many others, such as haskaps, red, white, and black currants, raspberries, saskatoons, gooseberries, and strawberries. I enjoy their flowers, foliage, and of course, the tasty fruit, which range from sweetest (saskatoons and strawberries) to tartest (currants and cranberries).  All of them are chock full of vitamins and anti-oxidants.

By various preservation methods, we enjoy them throughout the year.  Those without big seeds are the easiest to use.  Some, I freeze whole, to pop into pancakes, pies, or muffins or snow ice cream in winter.  Others I store in vinegar.  Most I pressure can for shelf stable juice, jam, jelly, chutney, and other concoctions, like barbecue sauce (See recipe below).  

The first harvest of the year is haskaps from five bushes that line the south side of our cabin. 

About a gallon of currant juice

They range in size from 6x5x4 to 3x3x4 ft.  The fruits have a knobby, elongated shape, like one’s little finger, with dark blue-purple skin.  They taste like a cross between a blackberry and a concord grape.  After eating our fill straight from the bush, we harvested about 1 ½ gallons, mostly for a delicious jam.  I love it with corn pancakes. 

Domestic raspberries spread as prolifically as their wild brethren.  My original 15 canes now fill 4 rows, about 14 feet long, each, plus scattered other plots, plus all the canes I have given away to friends or yanked out of adjacent gardens that they invaded.  We harvested about 6 gallons and finally stopped because the rain battered the remaining fruit.  We use this bountiful harvest in various ways.  Bryan recently made a batch of beer with 5 lbs of raspberries.  I add some to a batch of pinot noir (that I make from a kit of concentrated pinot noir juice - Fontana brand, about $69 to make 6 gallons).  I make many jars of spicy barbeque sauce this time of year with one berry or another.  This year: raspberry. 

None of the currant recipes I find on line seem to bother about the many seeds, but the variety we planted has lots of them for the size of the berry, and since they are bigger than raspberry seeds, I do not like them in a final product.  High-bush cranberries, too, have a large, flat seed.  So both of these berries I process into juice, syrup, or jelly, netting 4:1 yield – that is 4 gallon of fruit yields 1 gallon of fruit. 

The procedure of separating the fruit from the seeds involves several steps, several counter tops, and makes a mess, so I prefer to harvest many gallons over several days, freeze them, and then set aside several hours to process the fruit, and then pressure can it.    

Red currant bushes

When I started out, I poured raw berries into the hopper but the act of grinding squirted juice all over the kitchen.  Since then, I heat the berries in a big pot first, to pop the skins.  Then I let the pot cool overnight.  The next morning, after breakfast,  I assemble the food mill and clamp it to the kitchen table, next to several rags and two big bowls.  In the sink, I place a cheese cloth lined colander over a large pot.  I ladle the juicy berries into the top hopper and start manually turning a metal arm that draws  the fruit down into the grinder.  The juice pours into one bowl, while a pulpy, seedy bolus is extruded out into a second bowl.    

Our food mill came with several grinders, each with different sized holes with helpful usage labels like “salsa”, “berries” and “apples.”  However, we found that the “berry” grinder cannot handle the seeds of the cranberries and currants.  They clog the mechanism to a full stop, which we then have to dismantle, clean, and reassemble.  A MESS.  So we use the “salsa” grinder which does not clog, but allows a lot of seeds to escape into the juice bowl.  Now what?  After I process the fruit, I pour the seedy juice through the large cheese cloth lined colander in the sink.  Then I squeeze out as much of the juice as I can into the pot.  When I have hens, I feed them the pulp and seeds.  When I don't, I dump them in a location where a future bush might be a pleasant addition. Major clean up of sink, table, floor, pots, bowls, and mechanisms ensue.   

When I have accumulated about 2 gallons of juice, it is time to pressure can it in order to make it shelf stable for future enjoyment or for gifts.  For my size canner, I sterilize 7 quarts or 14 cups of glass mason jars in hot water in the pressure canner while heating the juice on another burner.  I ladle hot juice into hot jars, screw the lid onto the canner, and process for about 15 minutes.  Easy.  If I want to make jam or jelly, I mix a 1:2 ratio of sugar to juice and bring to a gentle boil, cooking it down to thicken it.  With a candy thermometer, I endeavor to get the temperature to about 220 F.  If all goes well, the mixture will thicken into jam.  If not, I have fruit syrup.  What’s not to like?  I also enjoy drinking the sweetened juice hot or cold.

 When I was a single mom, I looked at those small, expensive plastic containers of berries with envy.  On occasions when I bought one or two, my boys and I devoured them in a minute.  I feel so fortunate now, to live in a setting where so many delectable berries grow so prolifically… even in such a cold and dreary summer, when little else did.

RECIPE:  SPICY BARBEQUE SAUCE WITH BERRIES

I make this is large batches.  The recipe below is for a small batch, in case you would like to try it out and tweak it for your tastebuds.

Beer: 1 cup

Vinegar: 1 cup

Molasses: 1 cup

Berries:  1 cup of mashed raspberries or 1 cup of currant or cranberry juice  (Blackberries would be good, too)

Tomato paste:  1 6 oz can

Chipotle in adobe sauce:  1 pepper, chopped, and a tablespoon or so of sauce

Add herbs and spices of choice.  I add coffee and cloves to “darken” the flavor, several cloves of garlic, and chili powder. 

Enjoy.

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